Luva--I think it's great! Nice job. My pics are below. I'm kind of proud too!!! Happy gardening

No way is it too much! We put 12" of compost in our raised beds in early spring. It will not burn as long as it is "finished" compost. (you cannot put fresh horse manure in, for example!) The more you put in, the more your plants will love you.

dalton thanks for the pics. I have been talking to my husband about making a bin. When I saw your pallets I knew that was the bin for me. Maybe because I can get the pallets free and it does not look hard to do. Swanz that is a very nice bin my hats off to you. I tried to do that once and my daughter just laughed at the finished product and my family threw it out. Oh well so much for building things.

He ain't joking but he's still not entirely correct. In order to compost, one has to have moisture, no moisture, no composting. Even a bag of dry leaves will freeze because they are not at zero moisture. They may thaw out faster than wet leaves, but that's physics or something. I have had piles at 150F in the fall, freeze during the winter and re-heat in the spring. They were not too moist, they just couldn't generate enough heat to compensate for the -30C air temperature. I've also had windrows not freeze entirely but that was because they had a sufficient snow cover to insulate them from that -30C air temperature and they could then generate enough heat to compensate for the much lower heat loss. The mistake in his theory is confusing an out of tolerance pile (not moist enough or too moist etc.) that isn't generating a lot of warmth as it decomposes. If all the parameters are in the range conducive for composting, some warmth will be generated as long as the micro-organisms remain active. This may extend the time it takes to freeze. Getting out of the optimal range, the micro-organisms can't generate the warmth necessary to compensate for the heat loss, they cool, go dormant and the pile freezes. In a nutshell, a pile freezes when the heat loss is greater than the heat generated at ambient temperatures below the freezing point. There are numerous factors that come into play to affect this. Michael, your plan is as good as any. Lloyd